MCCULLOUGH HAS DEFIED THE ODDS

Chaparral High senior was never expected to play contact sports

Despite the effects of Asperger’s syndrome, Chaparral High School wrestler Matthew McCullough has become one of Riverside County’s top heavyweights. He has also excelled in the classroom with a 3.5 grade-point average. Don Boomer • U-T

Despite the effects of Asperger’s syndrome, Chaparral High School wrestler Matthew McCullough has become one of Riverside County’s top heavyweights. He has also excelled in the classroom with a 3.5 grade-point average. Don Boomer • U-T

Battle for the Belt

TEMECULA  Mark McCullough recalled when he first was informed that his second-grade son Matthew was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.

“(They said) he’s probably going to live a normal life, but don’t ever plan on him doing organized sports or definitely don’t plan on him doing any kind of contact sport,” said Mark McCullough, a San Diego police officer.

So much for that prophecy. Chaparral senior Matthew McCullough has since developed into one of the top heavyweight wrestlers in the Inland Empire. He placed third at the Rialto Carter Invitational in December and finished fifth at the Riverside County Championships on Jan. 4-5.

The 6-foot-5, 277-pound behemoth with a size-16 shoe is 2-0 in league dual-meet matches after finishing second in the Southwestern League in his weight division in 2011-12.

“We are pretty confident when we go out in a dual meet that he is better than most heavyweights out there in the Southern Section,” Chaparral co-coach Jake Paino said of McCullough, who will be competing at Temecula Valley’s Battle for the Belt Invitational this Friday and Saturday. “It feels good to have that anchor in your lineup.”

McCullough has become such a force on the mat that his training partner, 25-year-old Andrew Ramer, often develops a sore neck and gets worn out when working with him at practice.

“He is stronger than weight-room strong,” said Ramer, Chaparral’s heavyweight coach. “A lot of kids are weight-room strong. He’s strong in other areas. Where did you get that strength? You know what they call grown-man strength? He has that grown-man strength. Usually, you get that grown-man strength when you have … kids; you have to carry those kids around. He just has some brute strength.”

The road to athletic prominence wasn’t a smooth trek for McCullough and his family.

“(His mother) Monica and I really put in a lot of effort and work,” said Mark McCullough, the Chaparral freshman wrestling coach. “He couldn’t catch a ball for the longest time. You’d throw it, and it would hit him in the chest, roll down. He couldn’t throw it. We didn’t stop. It wasn’t, ‘I am going back inside.’

“ ‘No Matt, we are going to keep working,’ Eventually, he got it.”

Another symptom of Asperger’s is the tendency for one to be transfixed on an interest in an obsessive manner. This symptom — Matthew did repetitive things in second grade — led his school district to alert his parents to a potential problem.

The Asperger’s diagnosis was made after Matthew spent a week undergoing academic-related tests at the Diagnostic Center in Los Angeles. Through the process, Mark and the educators quickly discovered that Matthew was highly proficient in mathematics, science and history. Intelligence is a positive trait of Asperger’s.

Asperger’s syndrome most notably affects kids with their ability to socially interact and communicate with others, according to